Home Brew Forum

Well for this one I am the assistant brewer. Its my fiancees turn to brew something she likes. And like all good Yorkshire lasses, she likes a mild, although with a bit of a bitter twist.
Learnt from the first brew of my return to the country that prep makes the brewday a hell of a lot easier. So preped the water with "mild" setting of GW water calc. And we measured out the malt.


Cracked out the decent camera for this one. Smallest amount of malt I have used for this brewlength.

Pale Malt 5 EBC 2800 grams 87.8%
Wheat Malt 3.5 EBC 200 grams 6.3%
Crystal Malt 130 EBC 100 grams 3.1%
Chocolate Malt 1050 EBC 90 grams 2.8%

Aurora Whole 8.1 % 90 mins 15 grams 40%
Golding Whole 4.7 % 90 mins 15 grams 40%
Aurora Whole 8.1 % 15 mins 10 grams 20%


Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.031
Final Gravity: 1.008
Alcohol Content: 3% ABV
Total Liquor: 31.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 29 EBU
Colour: 40 EBC


I think this is going to be a good one.

Well it went really well. Managed to abstain from the alcohol, even with the interuption of the neighbour (there must be some reason he comes round when I'm brewing....). Hit a 91% effiecency on the brew as a whole, so increased the brewength at the boil, and balanced the bittering hops to compensate, but forgot about the flavour hops. No big deal.

I ended up with 26L at 1.031, split between a demijon, and a 25L fermenter. I'll shove the fermenting bucket lot in to the corny and the demijon will find itself in to bottles. Mashed at 68C but due to the small amount of grain it dropped to 65C over 2 hours. Again no big deal, but should help to encourage body over alcohol.

Heres some pics.


Mash tun. Gone back to fly sparging hence the watering can. Its makes an easy brew with only 3kg of grain.


Beginning of the boil, hops added prior to the boil again.


Flavour hops and protofloc.

The colour is exactly what I want. I'll report back on how it looks when its poured and how it tastes.

Dressed in red on the right is the demijon of Ladybird Mild, on the right in the white and tan stripes is again ladybird mild and in the centre in the awful shirt is the belgian. Vogue. I think we will need some ice for Wednesday, its gonna be a hot un.

nice But I guess if it works!

Yeah its not ideal, I am looking for a going to go down the fridge route after I move house. The temperatures sort of flucctuate from 18C to 20C. So its workable. But with 27-30C coming on wednesday I think I will fill the bath and drop some ice in.

At the moment I have a cellar which doesn't get above 18 C and its usually lower than that so i can heat my brewing cupboard to 20 C pretty constant.
When we move house I'm not going to have a cellar so I'll probably have to investigate other temperature control stuff.

It was ok when I lived in Cumbria and Harrogate wasn't to bad either. But down here its like spain. When I move I am going to save up for a 10x20' shed, or build a brick one. Kit it out with all the gubbins. It needs to be shed as the brew stuff is getting too big to be house bound.

Well this one has filled a corny and 12 big bottles. Drank a pint straight fro the fermenter and boy its a good pint. So easy to drink, beautifully hopped and the malt isn't over powering like some milds I have tasted. Can't wait till the corny has picked up the co2.

Ended up around 2.8%-3%. Must do some more low alcohol brews, really pleased with this one.

Sounds good
I think I like the idea of Low alcohol brews, how do they do for flavour in comparrison to something with a higher alcohol content?

If your clever about it, and accept it really is a low alcohol brew you want (which often I didn't). Then by using a high mash temp and a SO4 or windsor you can get a fuller mouth feel close to one of a beer a few % more. The malt taste is more delicate and the hops taste comes out more, but I thought that a 1:1 IBU:SG was just right, but that might be down to fact that I got several litres extra, so it may have been more like 3:4.

when you say hotter mash, do you mean by a good few degrees?

pdtnc wrote:when you say hotter mash, do you mean by a good few degrees?

Mash at either 69 or 70C. What this does is extracts alot more Dextrine. As Dextrine is less fermentable than Maltose it leaves alot more residual sugars in your brew, hence more sweetness and a more thickness to the mouthfeel of the beer. Maltose is the more fermentable sugar in your malts. Lower mash temperatures will promote the Maltose/Dextrin percentage in favour of Maltose, making a 'thinner' but stronger beer.

Darker malts will typically be more favourable in Dextrine than Maltose, hence being less fermentable but more of a 'body builder' in the texture of your ale.

Nice going SimpleOne, I found the brew day thread after you posted your label and thought I had better check the forums before asking the obvious question on what the recipe was. Moving from AG to AG very quickly now getting one every two weeks and the last one was a Low alcohol Mild where I decided to up the mash temp to retain more body and sweetness to the brew, So really glad yours has turned out well for you. Looking forward to mine even more now you said how good yours has turned out.

Cheers

Same here. After doing the 4 months away, I am now busy replenning my stocks. I see a mini beer festival coming on in a few weeks! I think I am going to go for a hoppy light pale ale with cascades, then stout and then..... I'll eventually get around to that hoeggarden clone!

Its lovely. High mouth feel, low ABV (I hope!). Looks darker in a dimple or a standard beer glass. Pictured with a home made beer mat. Which I will do for all the corny beers as I enjoy making the labels.